Mirror's Edge™

I preemptively think I’m gonna be sick. Don’t get me wrong: there are few things in this world I want more than Oculus Rift virtual reality for my mad dash through Mirror’s Edge‘s theme park of parkour, but now that it’s probably going to happen, I realize that I should probably bid farewell to any lunches I’ve had in the past couple months. And who will I have to thank for my sudden bouts of violent nausea? Interestingly, it won’t be EA. Instead, a third-party toolset called Vireio Perception is primed to add Rift support to Mirror’s Edge and other older titles.

As the decidedly not very good Medal Of Honor: WARFACEFIGHTER received its critical pannings, one refrain was repeated again and again: they’re the games EA puts out on the year’s DICE don’t have a new Battlefield ready. That may well be true, but EA are now at pains to point out (not necessarily in reaction, I should say) that DICE are not “a Battlefield factory”. (Imagine a non-gamer reading those words. “Dice are not battlefield factories? And you say FPS games HELP your minds?”) There’s more to the Swedish team, they insist to OXM today. And in response rumours that Mirror’s Edge 2 is in development have once more bubbled to the surface.

Are you sad? Tired? Angry? Upset because you spilled some milk and, contrary to popular opinion, it was in fact the end of the world> after all? Well, don’t be. Today is a happy day, because criminally underrated first-person runner (with some shooty bits that should’ve leaped off a building and never looked back) Mirror’s Edge is on the comeback trail. For a while, it’s mostly been wishful thinking from folks at DICE, but now the people with the money are talking, and they’re saying wonderful, joyous things.

I snarked on Twitter a few days back that the people making the new Spider-Man film (a reboot, hilariously) must be more than a little familiar with Mirror’s Edge given the astonishingly familiar first-person-perspective ultra-parkour sequence in its trailer, but this cheeky compar-o-video makes for proof positive. ..(more…)